Supporting Three-Dimensional Energy Learning in a Project-Based Approach That Emphasizes Modeling Energy Transfers Between Systems

• In Event: 42.030 - Developing Optimal Learning Moments in Science by Engaging Students in Project-Based Learning Across K–12

Abstract

Objectives
Project Based Learning (PBL) environments engage students in three-dimensional learning (Krajcik, 2015) that emphasizes disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts (NRC, 2012). In this paper, we focus on how PBL can help middle school learners engage in three-dimensional learning using an approach to teaching energy in which students develop increasingly sophisticated models of energy transfers between systems.

Theoretical framework
In PBL, students address a driving question throughout a series of connected investigations that focus on a small set of core ideas (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). Accordingly, cognitive tools, which scaffold students’ scientific thinking and development of increasingly sophisticated understandings over time, play a central role in PBL (Krajcik & Shin, 2014). Models (e.g., diagrams, simulations) serve as such cognitive tools. By constructing and revising models, students reflect on their ideas and deepen their understanding of core science principles over time (Schwarz et al., 2009). While the role of energy in phenomena is commonly represented diagrammatically (Scherr et al., 2016), these representations are often descriptive rather than generative. Little is known about how diagrammatic energy models can function as cognitive tools that evolve throughout instruction to support scientific thinking and motivate a need to know about new ideas.
Using learning-goals-driven design process (Krajcik, McNeill, & Reiser, 2008), we developed new middle school energy curriculum that emphasizes student construction of diagrammatic models of energy transfers between systems, and investigated how students’ ideas developed during instruction.


Methods
Two 8th grade science teachers piloted the new unit with their students (N=208) in a rural, low socioeconomic level school. We administered learning assessments throughout instruction, collected student artifacts and videos of lessons, and conducted interviews with a sample of students that was representative according to science achievement (N=30). We used quantitative and qualitative methods to explore how students’ ideas developed during instruction and to investigate the role of the energy models as a cognitive tool.

Results
We focus on selected interview and observation results that provide insight into student thinking when using energy models. During mid-unit interviews, in which students were asked to explain novel phenomenon, half of the students who were prompted to draw an energy model were more likely than their peers, who were not prompted, to correctly speculate that some non-obvious system or process must be involved in the phenomenon. Further, in a lesson focused on energy transfers in magnetic interactions, students spontaneously cited the rules of the energy models to speculate that energy could be transferred to or from the magnetic field between magnets. This speculation spurred further investigation of fields as a physical entity that can transfer energy to or from it. Overall, evidence suggests that constructing models helped both high- and low-achieving students to systematically build ideas as they investigated the driving question.

Significance
PBL instruction holds promise for engaging students in three-dimensional science learning (Krajcik, 2015). This paper informs how the use of specifically-designed models can serve as cognitive tools to both scaffold and prompt learning during PBL energy instruction.

Authors

• Jeffrey Nordine, Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education

• Marcus Kubsch, IPN